Time

"[The] challenge that billions of us do every day: deciding whether to believe something on the Internet."​

​We don’t fall for false news just because we’re dumb. Often it’s a matter of letting the wrong impulses take over. In an era when the average American spends 24 hours each week online–when we’re always juggling inboxes and feeds and alerts–it’s easy to feel like we don’t have time to read anything but headlines. We are social animals, and the desire for likes can supersede a latent feeling that a story seems dicey. Political convictions lead us to lazy thinking. But there’s an even more fundamental impulse at play: our innate desire for an easy answer.​Humans like to think of themselves as rational creatures, but much of the time we are guided by emotional and irrational thinking. Psychologists have shown this through the study of cognitive shortcuts known as heuristics. It’s hard to imagine getting through so much as a trip to the grocery store without these helpful time-savers. “You don’t and can’t take the time and energy to examine and compare every brand of yogurt,” says Wray Herbert, author of On Second Thought: Outsmarting Your Mind’s Hard-Wired Habits. So we might instead rely on what is known as the familiarity heuristic, our tendency to assume that if something is familiar, it must be good and safe." Read more.

​“Scores of white supremacists had been expected to rally on Sunday in Washington, DC, for the second “Unite the Right” rally, but only a small cadre of right-wing demonstrators ultimately showed up — and were vastly outnumbered by counterprotesters.

The small group of white nationalists made their way to Lafayette Square opposite the White House from a local metro station, and were swamped by a flood of police, press, and counterprotesters. While hundreds of people were out on the streets of the nation's capital, some reporters estimated that only 20 white nationalists were among them.” Read more

Time

​"The question when photographing any fringe groups, but especially those that preach hate, is whether you are amplifying a message that would otherwise be lost in the wind, and encouraging an advocate who, left alone, might slink off. But President Donald Trump’s notorious defense of the white supremacists at Charlottesville — 'I think there is blame on both sides' — wiped that nuance clean away." Mark Peterson, Photographer. Click here to see and read more.

“In an interview with 'Meet the Press' on Sunday, the former White House aide claims she has heard recordings of the president saying the N-word and apologized for being ‘complicit.’

Former Apprentice star and aide to President Donald Trump Omarosa Manigault-Newman joined NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday morning to discuss her time working in the White House and her book about the experience, Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House.

To begin her interview with host Chuck Todd, Manigault-Newman addressed a rumored tape of Trump saying the N-word — something Tom Arnold has threatened to release publicly in the past. ‘I have heard the tape...I know it exists and what I regret is that these people are trying to leverage it as an October surprise. I don't want to be a part of it,’ Manigault-Newman said...” Read more.

The Washington Post

Fact checking the Cortez media blitz...​

"Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 28-year-old self-described “democratic socialist” who unexpectedly toppled a top Democratic incumbent in the primary for New York’s 14th Congressional District, is a sudden media star even though she has not been elected to Congress. (She has no real competition in the general election.)

With celebrity comes scrutiny. Ocasio-Cortez has come under fire for dismissing concerns about the anticipated costs of her proposals and offering too-glib answers.

For instance, in an appearance on CNN on Monday, when challenged on the costs of government-financed health care, she answered: 'Why aren’t we incorporating the cost of all the funeral expenses of those who died because they can’t afford access to health care? That is part of the cost of our system.'”

Bloomberg

"(Bloomberg) -- Donald Trump accused his own attorney general of being “scared stiff and missing in action” as the president continued to question whether officials in his administration have acted appropriately in probing the Trump campaign’s Russian connections...​

​Scapegoating Sessions

Saturday’s comments by Trump appeared to be responding to a statement by the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which said it was suing the Justice Department for records of communications involving Ohr, his wife, Steele and Fusion GPS.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a former Republican senator from Alabama, who recused himself from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into Russian meddling in the election. 'Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt now,' Trump tweeted on Aug. 1.

Earlier on Saturday, on a rainy day at his New Jersey golf course, Trump said he may intervene to force the Federal Bureau of Investigation to turn over to Judicial Watch text messages sent by former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

'Why isn’t the FBI giving Andrew McCabe text messages to Judicial Watch or appropriate governmental authorities,” Trump tweeted. “FBI said they won’t give up even one (I may have to get involved, DO NOT DESTROY). What are they hiding?'” Read more.

FactCheck.Org

​Q: Did President Trump donate his $400,000 salary to military cemeteries?

"Numerous readers have asked FactCheck.org in recent weeks whether President Donald Trump has donated his $400,000 salary toward repairing military cemeteries — supposed news that somewebsites are accusing the press of ignoring.

But while the president does donate his salary to different government initiatives each quarter, no donation to date has been specifically made to repair military cemeteries. Nor has he donated $400,000 — a whole year’s salary — to one specific cause." Read more.

CBS News

After a heated cross-examination, Manafort's former business associate Rick Gates completed his testimony as the prosecution's star witness. The defense team spent much of Wednesday attacking Gates' credibility. CBS News Washington correspondent Paula Reid has details.

USA TODAY

COLUMBUS – The tight race between Democrat Danny O'Connor and Republican Troy Balderson just got tighter. Election officials in Franklin County found 688 previously uncounted votes in a Columbus suburb. The result: O'Connor had a net gain of 190 votes, bringing the race's margin down to 1,564.Read more.

​“Twelve people were shot and killed in Chicago over the weekend, a reminder that, despite progress, the causes of the city’s notorious crime problem have yet to be addressed

...At a news conference on Monday, the police superintendent and the mayor blamed too many guns in circulation, the failure of the judicial system and the need for better parenting.

• Community leaders and civil rights groups say the police have given those who live in the neighborhoods hit hardest by the violence little reason to trust them. Chicago has one of the lowest rates of solving killings of any major U.S. city.” Read more

The Hill

"President Trump is solidifying his opposition to California’s environmental policies, saying they are to blame for the state’s historic wildfires...​

​"Trump initiated the spat on Sunday when he tweeted that the fires 'are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws,' which cause water to be 'diverted into the Pacific Ocean,' and prevent trees from being cleared.

A day later he posted another tweetabout water being 'diverted,' and he said Gov. Jerry Brown (D) 'must allow the Free Flow of the vast amounts of water coming from the North.'

The New York Times

"WASHINGTON — The Trump administration could potentially waste billions of dollars on a border wall because it failed to fully account for factors like varying terrain and land ownership along the Southwest border, according to a new report...​

"The report, conducted by the Government Accountability Office, found that Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for construction of the wall, did not consider the cost of building along each segment of the border, which can vary depending on factors such as topography and land ownership.

The report also found that the agency selected locations for barriers without fully assessing where they were needed to prevent illegal border crossings." Read more.

USA TODAY

​AP reporter Chad Day highlights the first week of the Paul Manafort trial, which saw one of Manafort's tax preparers admit that she helped disguise $900,000 in foreign income as a loan in order to reduce his tax burden.

Reuters

​"At Mr. Manafort's request we did not disclose foreign bank accounts," Gates told the jury in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, describing their relationship of two decades as limited to business. "Outside of business we did not socialize."

onePolitics

Trump seems to think his tariff policy is working big time. He is telling supporters that the tariffs are already producing big results. Are they?
​

Here are two of Trump's tweets on the subject:

Tariffs are working big time. Every country on earth wants to take wealth out of the U.S., always to our detriment. I say, as they come,Tax them. If they don’t want to be taxed, let them make or build the product in the U.S. In either event, it means jobs and great wealth.....

USA TODAY & onePolitics

The first amendment guarantees us more than free speech. It guarantees us information, knowledge---and knowledge is power. Moreover, freedom of thought and expression promotes freedom of ideas...regardless of whether you agree or disagree.

So, why would a President attack the one thing giving us knowledge and the power to make change or to express ideas? Why would the President's staff disagree?
​

FiveThirtyEight

Man vs. Woman at the polls.​

​"The gender gap — the fact that women tend to vote Democratic at a higher rate than men do — has been a persistent feature of American politics, and it’s only getting wider. According to 2016 exit polls, women voted for Hillary Clinton by 13 percentage points, and men voted for President Trump by 11 points. That 24-point gap in the national popular vote was the biggest in the history of the presidential exit poll.

This week, we got a poll showing that same 24-point gender gap in the only “national” election of 2018: the national popular vote for the U.S. House. A YouGov survey found that male voters preferred the Republican candidate by 9 percentage points, while female voters preferred the Democratic candidate by 15 points. It was a bit of an outlier, but not egregiously so: A RealClearPolitics-style average1 of generic-ballot polls taken in the past two weeks reveals a gender gap of 16 points, and the two highest-quality polls from that period — Quinnipiac and Marist — each showed a gap even bigger than 24 points. If YouGov, Quinnipiac or Marist is correct, then just like 2016 broke a gender-gap record for presidential races, 2018 will have the widest gender gap in congressional elections since at least 1992.2Read more.